Chapter Text
It was not the sun - absent in the windowless hollow beneath the earth - that roused Izuku from sleep. Nor was it the winter chill seeping in as Christmas crept closer, or the abrupt reverberation from the floor above where he presumed a meeting had gathered. What drew him back instead were the lingering spectres of his past… and Eri’s soft, luminous voice as she climbed onto him, coaxing him gently toward waking.
Her hair was a tangle of sleep - tousled, uneven, defiantly unbrushed. She had yet to begin the day, and the obstinate cowlick at her hairline only worsened the chaos. Izuku lifted a languid hand, fingers drifting up to smooth it down, though his eyes still refused to open. He was tired. Bone-deep, soul-heavy tired. And as the memories of last night slowly eclipsed the older ghosts, he stayed where he was, his face half-buried in the pillow’s hollow.
He could not yet bring himself to meet the day.
He drew an arm around her waist and guided her down beside him, careful and unhurried. She followed instinctively, as though this small ritual had long ago been etched into her. The mattress dipped with a soft thump, and she inched closer without a word. With his eyes still closed, he lifted his arm, and Eri immediately curled beneath it, pressing her nose into his chest. Slowly, he folded around her, his chin coming to rest atop her hair as a quiet breath slipped free.
“Morning, ’Zuku,” she whispered, her voice a low, sleepy hum that soaked through the thin cotton of his shirt and warmed the skin beneath. A small, contented smile curved at her lips as her lashes fluttered shut again, as if consciousness had brushed past her only by accident and she was already drifting back toward dreams. Her tiny fingers searched for his in the quiet space between them, slipping between his own with so much ease - like the world had always meant for their hands to fit this way.
“Good morning, Eri,” he murmured, the syllables slow and heavy on his tongue, as though they had to drift through a fog before reaching his mouth. His arms tightened around her without thought. Her warmth seeped gradually into him, soaking through skin and sinew and settling somewhere deep in his chest - fragile, precious, something he wasn’t ready to release. “Did you sleep okay?”
“Mm.” The blanket shifted against him as she nodded, the faintest whisper of fabric in the stillness. “Like a baby.”
He wished - achingly - that he could echo those words, too. But the night still clung to him like damp smoke. Rest, safety, even the smallest scrap of peace felt undeserved after last night - after what he’d done with his own two hands. The memories were still too bright, too immediate; they bled through his thoughts in jagged flashes of motion and sound. He couldn’t even shape them into something coherent yet - they were simply there, raw and crimson and undeniable.
And yet… there was still a small, stubborn thread of hope inside him. That someday, sleep might return to him unburdened. That the inside of his head might fall silent again. That “sleeping like a baby” wouldn’t sound like a distant fantasy, but like something ordinary within these walls that hemmed them in.
He tried to remember what it had been like - before everything had gone wrong, before he’d even turned nine. Nights that ended in dreams rather than in the echo of his own heartbeat thundering in his ears. But the memory was faded at the edges, like a photograph left too long in the sun. He could imagine the feeling… but he could no longer claim it as his own.
Eri shifted closer, burrowing into him with the trusting certainty only she possessed - and the movement struck him like a blow. In his mind, he could still see it: the invisible sheen of blood coating his palms, heavy and dark, clinging to every crease of his skin. And now those same hands were resting against her back.
Touching her.
Staining her.
He felt contaminated - ruined - as though guilt had soaked through him so completely that it had become a permanent part of him. And the fear lodged in his throat was simple and suffocating: What if, just by holding her, he dragged her down with him? What if his darkness could spread?
Izuku was awake in an instant.
He pushed himself upright slowly, careful not to jostle Eri - though she made a brave attempt to stop him, her small palms nudging insistently at his chest as if she could will him back down. It was hopeless. She was so small in his arms, so breakable, that the fear lodged itself deep inside him: that the sheer weight of what he’d done - of every life he’d taken - might crush her if he held too tightly…
But his arms did not loosen.
Because the moment there was empty space between them, he knew reality would surge back, uninvited and merciless.
He shifted her slightly, trying not to disturb her - and soft giggles bubbled out of her, light and unguarded. The sound cut through him. She thought this was a game. A simple movement. A moment of comfort.
But to him, it felt like the only thing keeping him from splintering apart. If he released her, he was certain he would collapse - fracture so completely that there would be no way to gather the pieces again.
Hiro’s voice rose in his head anyway - pleading, desperate. He remembered the gun, heavy and alien in his trembling palm, its cold barrel pressing against bone. The acrid sting of gunpowder flooded back to him, biting at the air and clinging to his clothes like smoke. And the body - still, wrong, the man’s neck bent at an unnatural angle as his head had fallen against Izuku’s lap, as though even gravity refused to treat him gently.
And a harsh curse lodged in his throat - sharp, acrid, and impossible to swallow.
He screwed his eyes shut for a single, fragile heartbeat, as if the brief plunge into darkness might somehow erase the images scorched across the backs of his eyelids.
It had been…not easy, but tolerable before. Manageable.
All he’d needed to do was position the rifle at the far edge of a rooftop, align the narrow field of vision through the scope, lie flat against the cold surface, and track the moving silhouette until the moment came. Then he would close his eyes and pull the trigger - certain he’d struck true, yet unwilling to confirm it. He’d always left before he had to see the result, because witnessing what he’d created felt like a punishment even he couldn’t endure.
But this time, there had been no distance. No buffer. Only red. He’d been spattered in it - fully, undeniably, and irreversibly stained. And he couldn’t scrub it away as quickly as before, nor could he avoid looking at it. He’d been forced to confront it - to watch how deeply the colour seeped into his skin, how it wedged stubbornly beneath his fingernails, how it clung inside his ear. Even in the shower, the water swirling down the drain had taken far longer to clear than he’d prayed for.
He’d only killed other villains before. Bad men. And Hiro…Hiro hadn’t been either of those.
The guilt sat wrong inside him. Twisted. Misaligned. It didn’t fit. It hurt not because his conscience was finally overflowing after ignoring so many deaths - but because he no longer believed he had the right to feel it. He had no justification for clutching this guilt to his chest like something sacred, because remorse did not absolve the act. A starving dog that kills a stray cat and then weeps is not purified simply because it grieved - survival does not varnish the cruelty from what has already been done.
There would never be a justification. Not for the shot he fired. Not for the scream that cleaved through the night when the man’s son cried out for a father who would never answer again.
What right did Izuku have to steal someone’s loved one merely to protect his own? What right did he possess at all?
None. And he knew it - painfully, completely - yet he had still stripped a desperate family bare, all because an evil man had curled his fingers around Eri’s fragile safety and squeezed. He had taken from someone already hollowed out by scarcity, emptying pockets that were long ago too deep to search for spare change.
Izuku was guilty. But he was not forgiven. He doubted he ever would be.
And this kill - this one - weighed heavier than all the rest.
Because all the blood he had split, and the debilitating agony in his core, was worth it for the sweetness of her laughter.
Gazing down at the crown of her head, Izuku carefully lowered Eri onto his bed. A faint whine brushed her lips, soft and fleeting, but he didn’t linger. Rising to his feet, each step felt deliberate, heavy, slightly unsteady, as though his limbs carried the weight of a different kind of exhaustion. Fatigue etched itself at the corners of his eyes, dragging down his shoulders, pooling in the marrow of his bones.
All the while, he forced himself into silence, stifling any flicker of thought that might betray the storm behind his gaze to his oblivious sister - the one who had never deserved the burdens he carried, nor the shadows of his choices.
He crossed to the wardrobe - an old, tired thing with hinges that whispered when opened - and sifted through the neatly hung clothes with the absent care of routine. He chose a fresh pair of tracksuit bottoms and a plain shirt for himself, then reached for the familiar garment he always set aside for Eri: the simple beige dress that skimmed her knees, humble and unembellished, its hem uneven and jagged as though the world had frayed it one thread at a time.
He wasn’t prepared when he tossed her the dress; a quiet, urgent plea on his lips for her to close her eyes. He had been nearly ready for the familiar words she might speak as he pulled on the new set of clothes, lazily wrestling with the cuffs of his bottoms - and then he stilled, body rigid, caught off guard by the sudden sound that escaped him: a quiet noise of surprise.
“I dreamt that we were saved.”
Pride surged quietly through him, though. Not for the words themselves, but because all that had left his mouth was a soft, startled sound, and it seemed she hadn’t even noticed when he whipped around and saw her tiny palms pressed over her eyes.
He hadn’t told her he was finished yet, and a delicate relief washed through him - relief that she hadn’t seen his face contort into an ugly grimace. He exhaled slowly, letting the tension in his shoulders ease, and turned away as well, leaving her in the fragile secrecy of that small, unguarded moment.
And he was - fuck - all but in the headspace to talk about hero’s right now. The topic keeping him chained to Hiro’s face as it grew slack and pale.
“I don’t remember most of it, but… do you remember that dark hero?” Her voice shimmered softly, carrying a fragile sparkle of genuine happiness, as if the mere mention of him could conjure constellations across the sky. There was hope ringing clearly through every word, yet beneath it lingered a softer undertone, a subtle sorrow that he could feel, sticky and unbidden, thrumming beneath her words.
The grief around her wobbled quietly, like a thin, trembling barrier, nearly dissolving into the air when she added, with sudden certainty: “It was him!”
But even as she tried to mask it, Izuku saw it - the effort to maintain a brave, hopeful facade where nothing yet justified it. And truly… how could a seven-year-old carry a grief that large and ever hope to conceal it completely? She couldn’t. Not entirely.
And as much as instinct urged him to hush her - to swallow the words before the walls and any listening ears could seize them - he forced the tension from his shoulders, dragged air back into his lungs, and shaped a small smile onto his face instead. It was her turn to change, and he said as much quickly, covering his eyes as though nothing dangerous had just been spoken aloud.
God - he winced inwardly. He really, truly, should never have mentioned that scruffy man to her. He swallowed a groan and pictured the plain black outfit, the perpetually tired eyes hidden behind those misplaced-looking yellow goggles, and the scarf that had nearly strangled him once.
“Are you talking about… Eraserhead?” The pause slipped out unintentionally - but the dread behind it was painfully, unmistakably real.
“Yes!” she chirped, bright and breathless, as though genuinely impressed he’d guessed - as if he weren’t the one who’d first told her about Eraserhead at all. And as her excited rambling spilled on and on about her dream, Izuku reached for his comb, dragging it through his curls until they settled into something almost presentable - at least on the surface. It gave him something to do. A way to fix himself up. A way to not think about that hero on top of everything else.
But as she gingerly tugged her dress on out of sight, he failed - of course he failed - to keep his thoughts from circling back to him.
The hero who prowled the district beneath the cover of night, straying far too close to the Shie Hassaikai for anyone’s comfort - and the only one who always seemed to anticipate his moves before he’d even made them. The only one who could slip beneath his skin, read him as though he were an open book, and then throw that knowledge back in his face in the spaces between attempted capture and Izuku’s inevitable escape.
Eraserhead was… infuriating.
Exasperating.
Relentless.
Cuttingly sarcastic.
He was a walking storm of impending trouble - the promise of arrest, of iron bars and locked doors. Disheveled to the point of looking half-feral. Constantly shadowed by the faint scent of sweet coffee. Dusted with stray cat hairs that clung stubbornly to his suit.
Strong. Unyielding. Calculated.
A man in his early thirties, towering over six feet, terrifyingly efficient in close-quarters combat with that erasure quirk of his - and he was…
The only one Izuku couldn’t quite outrun.
The only one who looked at him - really looked - and seemed to see past the mask, past the trembling hands and the shaking breath, straight into the ugly truth he tried so desperately to bury. All while never knowing him, or ever learning his name or the shape of his face.
He spoke little, but every word landed like a quiet accusation.
He moved lazily, yet never wasted a single motion.
He fought like he’d already mapped the outcome twelve steps ahead.
And worst of all, beneath the exhaustion and the cynicism and the perpetual air of I-do-not-have-time-for-this, there was something else there too.
A stubborn, infuriating… humanity.
The kind that made it impossible to hate him outright - even when Izuku knew he should.
Because they were standing on opposite faces of the same tarnished, bronze coin. Hero and villain. Light and shadow.
And it was only through fleeting distractions - his small frame slipping into crevices the hero could never reach, his easy familiarity with the city’s darker seams that the hero didn’t even realize existed - that he’d managed to evade capture for this long.
And partly because, on some level, he suspects the hero has somehow pieced together that he’s only fifteen - and, inexplicably, doesn’t want to be the one to consign him to juvenile detention. Though that feels unlikely when he considers the strict, teacher-like code the man seems to live by. There’s a stern, almost academic severity in his resting scowl whenever their eyes lock across the distance between rooftops - a heartbeat before Izuku slips away, just as the strange fabric at the man’s throat begins to unfurl and hunt for him.
It never quite reaches him.
He never lets it.
Because Eraserhead was infuriating.
Exasperating.
Relentless.
Cuttingly sarcastic.
And yet - he was fun to run from. He was a silver lining. And It was genuinely entertaining to send him on wild chases, to scatter empty breadcrumbs and watch him follow. Izuku’s heart would race with something bright and reckless - not fear, not anger, not disgust or guilt - but exhilaration, when he narrowly slipped free. And it was oddly satisfying to hear the faint, muffled curse from the rooftop above when Eraserhead realized he’d vanished to the streets instead of staying high, because Izuku was annoyingly good at hide-and-seek.
He was, strangely enough, another kind of safety - right alongside Eri. Eraserhead was a man who did what he did because he believed in it, not because anyone made him or paid him for it.
Izuku liked Aizawa Shouta.
But God, the man was infuriating.
“That’s…”
The word bled out of him on a thin breath as Izuku dragged himself back into the present - out of the spiralling halls of his own head and into the soft light of his room. A small hand rested on his shoulder, a gentle, anchoring weight that told him he could uncover his eyes now. He did so slowly, blinking away the blur until Eri came back into focus - her lips folded into a closed, expectant smile, eyes bright with patience as she waited for his reply to the story he’d, uncharacteristically, failed to hear.
He winced inwardly as an apology pinched at his ribs. He did care. He didn’t usually drift when she spoke - not with her. Never with her. He adored her dreams, the soft little worlds she built out of nothing but imagination and fragile hope. But today had been…heavy. Fractured at the seams. And she had simply reached for him when he’d been deep in his head.
His tongue stalled. The words refused to take shape. He swallowed again - hard - forcing the thick knot of emotion from his throat, only for it to sink lower, settling like lead in his chest until his heart gave a slow, hollow drop. But instead of letting the weight pull him further under, Izuku gently tipped back and let his hand drift over her hair in a soft, steadying sweep. Enough. He was finished pitying himself.
For now, at least - the unruly voice in his head muttered - and he tried not to scold it for slipping out of its cage.
“That must’ve been an incredible dream,” he murmured, twirling a ribbon of her blue-silver hair between his index and middle finger, his other hand instinctively finding another small section to hold. His hip shifted back and, without needing prompting, Eri settled on the mattress between his legs. He brushed through the untidy strands with patient care, then reached for her comb on the little bedside table - the mattress giving a soft creak beneath his lean - and began smoothing everything into order.
“It was.” She agreed softly as a small, fragile, smile found its way back onto his face. But the hope she radiated faltered. It plummeted and her face stressed into straight, stillness as she craned her neck back.
His hand with the comb pausing in the air as he looked down. And the truth, irrevocably, settled back in. Her face fell - and so did his - as the illusion thinned and the room felt smaller once more. “But… sometimes I wish the dreams were real. That if I wished hard enough, they’d come true, and we wouldn’t have to stay down here anymore.”
A beat passed between them. Not silence, but something colder - a draft with no source, carrying the heavy residue of broken wishes. Shattered hopes. Dreams stripped of their direction and left to linger.
Izuku lowered the comb to the mattress at his side and leaned forward, angling himself just enough to truly see her. Her arms were held rigid at her sides, her posture too still, her gaze locked onto the floor - though her eyes betrayed her, trembling faintly despite her effort to keep them steady. He felt the meaning behind it. The desperation she had already lost, and the quiet refusal to admit it was gone. She treated it as something merely hidden, clenched tight in her fist, preserved by denial alone. As long as her fingers stayed white-knuckled and closed, she didn’t have to acknowledge its absence.
His palm, chilled despite himself, rose to cup her cheek - cold meeting cold - and all he could give her was a subdued, aching concession.
“I know.”
The words he longed to offer - reassurances, salvation - disintegrated on his tongue before they could ever form, crumbling into ash and dissolving before they had the chance to be heard. His comfort was insufficient. Paltry. There was nothing he could give her that wouldn’t, in the end, carve the wound deeper. Their reality was inescapable: they were trapped - sealed within the suffocating belly of the Shie Hassaikai. And though he had sworn this place would never become her grave, he could not sow hope in her heart where the soil was barren, where it had nowhere yet to root. Not until the day it could finally bloom.
“I’m sorry, Eri.”
She kept her eyes on the ground - on the chipped concrete floor, because even carpet would have been an indulgence here.
“I just…” Her hands folded together, fingers intertwining and twisting with nervous insistence, and Izuku’s hand slid onto her shoulder, grazing the edge of her bandages as it came to rest. “I know there’s nothing we can do,” she said quietly. “I just… I miss the sun.”
She turned abruptly then, knees drawing up as she folded herself fully into the narrow space between his legs, pressing close as if proximity alone might keep her from unraveling.
“I miss things I don’t know I’m missing.”
And like a switch thrown, the hush shattered. Her words spilled free in a breathless rush - a bright, frantic blaze of stuttered longing.
“I want to go to s-school. I want to make friends. I want to learn a new language. I want to try your favourite meals. I want to pick out my own toys - better ones. I want to wear a dress that glitters and isn’t old and plain. I’m sick of hand-me-downs with no origin. I want-”
Izuku drew her closer, though he did not quite embrace her, holding her just shy of a hug.
“What do you want, love?” he whispered, tentative, offering her his undivided attention and the unspoken permission to touch him, to lean into him, to unload everything she carried. Whatever she needed, he would endure it with her.
“I don’t want to be afraid of myself anymore.” Tears gathered, bright and heavy in her eyes.
“I don’t want Chisaki hurting us anymore.” Her breathing steadied from its frantic rise and fall, lashes fluttering as she fought to keep the tears contained.
“I don’t want my life to go by in this room.” Her voice fractured, her body rigid against his chest.
“I want…” Her words wavered. “I want to be saved. Just like we were in my dream.”
And when it all finally spilled out, it left her shaking in his arms - breath hitching as though the weight of it all had finally found a place to land. The words hung between them, fragile and exposed, and Izuku felt them press inward, crowding his ribs, leaving him painfully aware of how little space there was inside him to hold them.
“They’ll come get us soon, right, ’Zuku?” she whispered. “They haven’t abandoned us. They know we’re here - they’re just trying to find a way to get to us.”
Her hand twisted into his shirt, dragging the fabric loose from his chest, stretching the collar until it pulled tight at his throat - and he didn’t stop her. Didn’t care if it tore.
“We’re-” The breath left her like it had been knocked from her lungs. Her strength ebbed all at once, and her tears came in a sudden spill - soft and steady, like rain against a windowpane in the middle of November. He imagined they must sound the same as they struck his sheets and soaked into his jogging bottoms, quiet and unrelenting.
And for a small moment, he didn't speak. He couldn’t. His throat had closed around the things he wanted to promise her - rescue, sunlight, a future unmarred by concrete walls and bloodstained nights - because to give them voice would be to lie. And he would not do that to her. Not like this. Not when she was looking at him as though he were something solid, something capable of holding the world together.
So he rested his forehead lightly against the crown of her head instead, breathing her in, committing the warmth of her small body to memory. His arms came around her at last - not tight, not desperate, but firm enough to be real - a quiet vow made without words.
And because he loved the light blooming in her eyes - that small, stubborn brightness he couldn’t bear to extinguish - he nodded. He let her believe. He let that fragile flame burn on in her where his own had long since guttered out.
The truth, however, was far crueler. He had stopped believing in rescue a long time ago. If the heroes ever did come, they would likely tear her from his arms, mistaking him for the danger - another monster in Overhaul’s shadow. They would never understand. They would never see.
But she didn’t need to know that. Not now. Not ever - not if he could keep it from her.
“I don’t know when,” he said at last, his voice low, worn raw by honesty. His gaze drifted away, shame pooling heavy in his chest - shame at how utterly powerless he was to bend even the smallest corner of their reality. “And I don’t know how.”
His hand moved over her back in slow, deliberate strokes, steadying them both.
“But this isn’t forever. You’ll get your sunlight.”
And for reasons he couldn’t begin to explain, she nodded back. A small, broken sound slipped past her lips as she climbed onto him the way she had when she was little - not just curling close this time, but straddling him fully, clinging as she had when she was four and he was twelve and the world had still felt survivable.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry-” The words spilled out unchecked, piling atop one another until his voice wavered on the brink of breaking.
And she echoed him, just as desperately. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault-”
And for once, neither of them could make themselves believe the other.